It's Not Redemption if You're Dead
by orsa-verba
Summary: The first thing Peter does is deck him. [ QuinPeter / Spiderio / Quentin Beck x Peter Parker ]


Peter finds him at a bus stop in Kansas.

He didn't know he was looking. Not until Beck is right there in front of him, ball cap pulled low over his eyes. He's shaved. There are moles on his jaw.

The first thing Peter does is deck him. As hard and brutal as he can, all the force in his body thrown into that one blow. It cracks in the air like a lightning strike, slamming home against Quentin Beck's cheekbone.

1AM is dark and empty. A sleepy college student buries her nose in her book and ignores them, while the station agent looks on with hooded eyes. No one stops their scuffle. Broken security cameras are the only ones to stare as Peter drags Beck outside.

They fight. Do they fight? It feels like they whale on each other for hours. Beck is big and practiced. Peter is raw power and rage. They brawl in the dark, on the cold concrete, until their lungs scream.

Peter hates him. He hates him he hates him he _hates _him. The pain is so strong he thinks it might snap him in two. That this, right here, is where the burden is finally too much for him. He yowls like a dying animal, seethes like a raging storm, and then cries.

Collapsed against Quentin Beck's chest, clutching onto his flannel shirt, Peter cries and cries and cries.

Quentin wraps his arms around him. His face presses into Peter's unruly curls. He shakes. Peter can't tell, but maybe he cries too.

As dawn breaks, they get on the bus from Kansas City to Pierre, South Dakota. The sleepy college student gets on too, and a man wearing two hats, and another man with no luggage. Peter sits by the window, temple to the glass, and Quentin sits beside him.

They live like ghosts.

Peter finds them places to stay. Cash only motels and attics belonging to kind old ladies, soup kitchen store rooms and camp grounds no one bothers to maintain. Quentin finds them clothes, disguises of painful mundanity that sit on him like algae over a crystal pond. He trades out their shoes and bags, swaps their coats and hats and scarves.

Peter lets his hair grow. Quentin keeps shaving. He has three moles on the right side of his face. Peter reaches out and touches them, index finger pressing to newly-shaved skin. Later, Quentin touches his hair, wrapping a curl around his finger and letting it slide away again.

The world praises Mysterio. The world hunts for Peter Parker.

On a midnight bus from Wisconsin to Colorado, Peter finally asks Quentin; "Was any of it real?"

And Quentin shifts beside him, the arm around Peter's shoulders curling tighter, and says; "It all was."

In Breckenridge, they stay in a cabin. The town looks like Christmas, but they're there at the height of summer and Peter wishes there were snow. They stop in a small market for provisions and when they get to the register, there's a postcard of Breckenridge in winter in among the non-perishables. Quentin hands it to Peter, looking at him with his impossible blue eyes, and Peter wants something he can't find a name for.

They stay in Breckenridge longer than normal. It feels safe, its fairytale aesthetic a balm on the harsh reality they're living. Peter tells Quentin he's tired of buses. They take a train out of town.

Somewhere near Wyoming, they sit in a dingy diner and wolf down a hot meal. Quentin drinks a mug of coffee drowned in milk and sugar. Peter eats his weight in pancakes and sausage and eggs. He offers Quentin a link and he takes it from his fork with his teeth.

The scratchy old television over the counter doesn't make a sound, just plays grainy images on the faded screen. A voiceless reporter taps their papers on a desk. The fuzzy outline of Mysterio appears on screen, frozen in flight. It fades, replaced with the same old video reel.

"Let's go, Peter." Quentin says, placing two twenties on the table as he stands.

Mysterio mouths the words "_Spiderman is Peter Parker_." Peter gets up and follows Quentin out of the diner.

On their way to Montana in the back of a pickup truck driven by a woman who chewed tobacco and spoke in nods, Peter asks Quentin why he hated him so much. He uses past tense. He hopes it's past tense.

Quentin laughs and it sounds jagged, like the edges of a jar dropped from too high up onto kitchen tile.

"You got in the way." he says. "But I didn't hate you. Never hated you, Peter."

In the back of the pickup truck to Montana, Peter kisses him. Quentin's got three moles on the right side of his face, two on the left. He kisses Peter back like he's been waiting his whole life for it.

They share a bed in Bozeman. It's cheaper than renting a room with two and it's not the first time they've done it. This time, they don't sleep back to back. Quentin lays his head on Peter's chest and Peter hooks his leg over his waist. They'll wake up in a tangle of sheets and limbs and it doesn't matter.

Quentin wakes up looking alive for the first time since Peter's seen him, and he didn't realize how much he missed the sparkle in his eyes until then.

They get a junked car for cheap off some guy. Between the two of them, they scour the local junkyard for parts and get it running better than when it was new off the lot.

Quentin talks to her while they're working. He calls her "honey" and "pretty thing" and grins with grease on his hands. Peter's never been jealous of a car before. He thinks he's hiding it okay.

"Good work, pretty thing." Quentin says against his ear, the first time the engine turns over.

They christen the new faux-leather seats with sweat and laughter. Peter finds new moles on Quentin's chest. His shoulders. His arms and left hip and inner thigh.

Quentin didn't make the video.

He tells Peter one night as they're driving down toward New Mexico, windows rolled all the way down to coax in the cold air. The empty road stretches out behind them, before them, and overhead the sky is hung with too many stars.

"His name is William Riva." Quentin tells him. He watches Peter instead of the barren road, eyes bright in the darkness. "He's the only one who could have snagged the footage in time. He manned the computers."

"Why?" Peter asks. It's all he ever asks. It's all he really wants to know.

"I don't know. No one knows I'm alive, so maybe this was the best way to capitalize on what we'd accomplished with Mysterio. Maybe he has a larger plan in the works. I'm dead to them, so they don't have many options."

"Maybe," Peter says to the cacophony of stars overhead. "He was trying to get vengeance for you, and that was the best way he knew how."

Quentin doesn't say anything and Peter knows he's already thought of that. But thinking of their lives _before _is painful, and knowing people mourn them is worse.

The world still hunts for Peter Parker, but no one else has come to find him. Not Avengers, not Fury, not MJ or Ned. He knows it isn't their fault- MJ and Ned and Aunt May -that they would if they could. He wonders why no one has cleared his name. Why Fury and his shadowy contacts have been so silent.

Peter looks back at Quentin. He has stubble again, staining the edges of his jaw and chin. He looks relaxed behind the wheel of their car, driving on this empty road with nowhere in mind.

Who is mourning him? Who is looking? Did he leave someone behind, or was his whole life smoke and mirrors?

Peter reaches out and wraps his fingers around his wrist. Quentin flips his hand over easily, waits until Peter slides his fingers down against his palm, then curls their hands together. They fit. Their palms mesh and fingers entwine and Quentin is so solid and real that sometimes it feels like a punch to the gut.

A world of possibilities spills open in front of Peter's eyes, unwinding like this endless midnight road, reaching for the horizon.

They could go anywhere and do anything. Back to New York and resurrect the both of them, dash the lies the video is telling and sell a new one of their own. To California, and Quentin can work on movies and Peter can learn to surf. Back to Breckenridge, with it's perfect cabin houses and quaint cobblestone roads.

They're ghosts. Beings of mist and perception. The world has killed them both and now they wander, free of mortal trappings and the sins of their past.

Peter is too tired to be angry, loves too much to hate anymore. Quentin is right there beside him, soothsayer and liar and friend and lover and _his_. The regret which tethers his ghostly form to the living world, and he thinks he might be Quentin's.

"What're you thinking, pretty thing?"

His eyes are on the road again, his hand is still in Peter's.

"This is real." Peter says, like it's a fact. "Isn't it."

Quentin lifts their hands and presses his lips to the back of Peter's palm. They're warm. Kind of rough. He always kisses like this time will be the last, and it took Peter too long to realize that it was because Quentin still expects him to walk away.

Peter pulls their hands back and this time he kisses Quentin's knuckles instead. They're scarred from a fight in Oklahoma, tan from working in the sun to earn them a little more cash. His skin smells like leather and motel soap.

"This is real." Peter repeats against his skin. "We're real."

Quentin squeezes his hand.


End file.
